September 2017

Alys-we searched for that oxymoron of the ‘Ideal School’.
Performing School Tourism In over 180 schools in 21 countries,
Unpicking the binary in education away from alternative or mainstream,
Embodying places that are ‘educating differently’ Towards a queering...
Rhizomatically dancing with those ‘gems’ of my edge-ucation.

This thesis uses performing School Tourism to share stories that weave the complexities of the multiplicities of Alys, as the assemblage/ethnography (Wyatt & Gale, 2013) or my autoethnographic-we (Spry, 2016) searching for the ‘Ideal School’ around the world. The voices explored of the Alys-we are: Alys the UK state school teacher, Alys educating differently, Alys and Steiner, Alys the future parent, Alys the PhD student/ theorist, Alys the School Tourist, Alys the Performer, Alys the Van-Dweller, Alys the edge-dweller and the Queering of ‘Bad-Alys’. This thesis has developed performing School Tourism as an embodied approach, a feeling journey, that connects the ‘School Tourist’ rhizomatically (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980/87) with the more-than-human world of ways of ‘educating differently’. By accepting that their ‘Ideal School’ does not exist, these multiple-voices of Alys-we intra-act (Barad, 2007) to subvert the dominant discourse of education through uncovering ‘gems’ in these varied places around the world, thereby gaining a deeper understanding of the edge-ucation. This thesis concludes that current understandings of ‘school/schooling’ are not the future of learning but that sharing these ‘gems’ have potentiality (Munoz, 2009), through the ripple effect from performing School Tourism, to lead not to the ‘Ideal School’ but to changes within the current world and, on a more global scale, for new understandings of the ‘Earth-we’ as a 'utopian performative of hope' (Spry, 2016).